


An Ordinary Princess

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Adoption, Families of Choice, Fluff, Foster Care, Gen, Kid Fic, cm: family verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Books Emily Prentiss has loved. Set in the CM Kid-Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ordinary Princess

Emily remembers the first book she owned that was hers. It's a battered old copy of _The Ordinary Princess_ and her social worker had let her buy it in a library book sale. She has only hazy memories of the actual event but she knows the book has travelled with her, from backpack to backpack. She'd carefully written her name in purple pencil and carried it everywhere (even in to the bath tub - you learn to do things one handed surprisingly easily when you have an incentive), even when she wasn't supposed to read at the table.

It goes with her through a succession of foster homes and then, when she comes home she writes 'Hotchner' after Emily in a purple pencil from her brand new box of pencils. It's always been a special book and she sits it carefully on the bookshelf that is also new and she was allowed to pick out.

-

When Dad Gideon is home, he reads her _The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe_. Actually there are times when he can call home and read a chapter. It's something they do - she's curled up in bed with Daddy or curled around the phone and they talk and read together. Sometimes he tells her side stories about dryads or nymphs or fauns and sometimes he just reads the words to her, slow and carefully.

-

Papa reads The Lord Of The Rings to the whole family but they read _The Enchanted Forest_ together and he does all the voices right. She can read books by herself but it's not the same as those evenings curled together on the couch or cuddled on the bed and the way Papa manages to do all the voices right. In the time after Dad Gideon left she's glad for those evenings because it's not a replacement for Gideon but it's Papa, still making time.

Making sure she knows he's still here. They move on to other stories, other books (Pratchett, Gaiman, Tamora Pierce, all kinds of Anglo Saxon poetry) but Cimorene is special. When she presses _The Ordinary Princess_ in to his hands that's another kind of trust (and Papa always asks, before he takes it down to read).

-

Emily Prentiss is ten years old and Dad Dave is reading to her. He does it less than you might think, because Dad prefers to make up his own stories rather than read to them from books but this is her birthday, it's a new book and he's home for the weekend so it's a Reading To Emily night. She's sort of surprised he agreed to read _Terrier_ but then, Dad was good like that, she thinks with a smile. And he got her a coco and it's really nice to just sit and listen to his voice in the quiet of her room.

"Emmy" Dad says after they get a few pages in, "you do know that by reading this, I am giving you a completely upside down view of my job"

"Well I know you don't have a magic cat, Dad. Because Arwen doesn't even like you when you feed her. And you don't live in Tortall."

"I don't beat people up with batons either Emmy my Emmy. And the system of training the trainees..."

He trails off and gives Emmy a hug. "I'm glad I don't live in Tortall, I think. I wouldn't get to read this book to you after all and we wouldn't be going to the museum tomorrow."

They smile at each other and then go back to the story.


End file.
